the
long, six-foot drill with strokes that had behind them only muscles,
not the intense driving power of hope. A foot he progressed into the
foot wall and changed drills. Three inches more. Then--

"Harry!"

"What's 'appened?" The tone of Fairchild's voice had caused the
Cornishman to lean from his staging and run to Fairchild's side. That
person had cupped his hand and was holding it beneath the drill hole,
while into it he was pulling the muck with the scraper and staring at
it.

"This stuff's changed color!" he exclaimed. "It looks like--"

"Let me see!" The older man took a portion of the blackish, gritty
mass and held it close to his carbide. "It looks like something--it
looks like something!" His voice was high, excited. "I 'll finish the
'ole and jam enough dynamite in there to tear the insides out of it. I
'll give 'er 'ell. But in the meantime, you take that down to the
assayer!"

CHAPTER XIX

Fairchild did not hesitate. Scraping the watery conglomeration into a
tobacco can, he threw on his coat and ran for the shaft. Then he
pulled himself up, singing, and dived into the fresh-made drifts of a
new storm as he started toward town; nor did he stop to investigate the
fast fading footprints of some one who evidently had passed the mine a
short time before. Fairchild was too happy to notice such things just
now; in a tin can in his side pocket was a blackish, muggy mixture
which might mean worlds to him; he was hurrying to receive the verdict,
which could come only from the retorts and tests of one man, the
assayer.

Into town and through it to the scrambling buildings of the Sampler,
where the main products of the mines of Ohadi found their way before
going to the smelter. There he swung wide the door and turned to the
little room on the left, the sanctum of a white-haired, almost
tottering old man who wandered about among his test tubes and "buttons"
as he figured out the various weights and values of the ores as the
samples were brought to him from the dirty, dusty, bin-filled rooms of
the Sampler proper. A queer light came into the old fellow's eyes as
he looked into those of Robert Fairchild.

"Don't get 'em too high!" he admonished.

Fairchild stared.

"What?"

"Hopes. I 've seen many a fellow come in just like you. I 've been
here thirty year. They call me Old Undertaker Chastine!"

Fairchild laughed.

"But I'm hoping--"

"Yep, Son." Undertaker Chastine looke